


open flame

by lu_marii



Category: Minecraft (Video Game)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Author Projecting onto TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Cults, Emotional Manipulation, Fictional Religion & Theology, Foster Care, Found Family, Gaslighting, Gen, Gods, Kidnapping, Minor Character Death, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Philza Minecraft Is A God, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Sleepy Bois Inc as Family, TommyInnit-centric (Video Blogging RPF), Wilbur Soot and Technoblade and TommyInnit are Siblings, god i . please make separate tags for charas and rpf please plase plesae, more charas and relationships will b added :), thats a new tag im coining it, this is not RPF
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-14 00:42:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 14,252
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29534916
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lu_marii/pseuds/lu_marii
Summary: prime - phil, as the mortals call him - loves these billions of mortals he has created. each is his child, and each he loves with all his heart. of course, it only makes sense that some of his children would fall more directly into his care.there is wilbur, the siren he found on the beach as a baby. there is techno, the soldier he took under his wing.then there is the whirlwind that is tommy. he's not quite what phil expected - but phil wouldn't change him for the world.or: tommy was in a cult, is bound to the god of chaos, was taken from said cult, and is now the foster child of prime himself.
Relationships: BadBoyHalo & TommyInnit, Technoblade & TommyInnit (Video Blogging RPF), Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit, TommyInnit & Phil Watson (Video Blogging RPF), Wilbur Soot & Technoblade & TommyInnit & Phil Watson, Wilbur Soot & TommyInnit
Comments: 126
Kudos: 492
Collections: Chossi's fic reccomendations for the soul





	1. phil's prologue

**Author's Note:**

> brrrr new fic machine go brrr 
> 
> yeah i got like 3 zelda fics to finish. whats it to ya 
> 
> anywya welcome to my first real dsmp fic. an obligatory note that this is abt the charas and never ever abt the content creators 
> 
> big ol tw for the whole fic for - child abuse, emotional manipulation, gaslighting, panic attacks, HEAVY religious content (although it's not a real world religion), a little bit of gore,, yeah. more specific warnings before each chapter. it gets better, though, dw, there's a happy ending !!
> 
> also a small note: mumza is here but i wasn't sure if she was comfy being in fics even for a small role so she is not referred to by her real name, just as "the goddess" :) 
> 
> thank u to anyastasia and motheyes for helping me <3 u two r da real homies

the creator is the first born. 

he rises from swirling stardust and a flash of light, golden wings unfurling from his back. nearly immediately, he creates his planets, crafts little animals from his dreams. he follows their progress, walks among them, watches wide-eyed as they fall out of his control and live and die and evolve into entirely new species. 

and when finally he gets lonely, tired of the animals who run from him and his wings, he crafts little people in his own image who will not run. at first he gives them wings. but unlike him they are beholden to gravity and this silly thing called logic, and soon he finds that they do not work quite right with the way their anatomy works and the things can’t hold them properly in the sky, and soon his little people stop using their wings until they disappear from their genes entirely. 

the creator is not upset. they do not have to be exactly like him. they simply have to  _ be _ . 

they are smart and they are feisty, they are full of love but quick to war, and soon the creator finds that he can not handle them on his own. and they are living for a long time, living and creating more of themselves faster than their little world can handle. 

the goddess is not created at his hands. she simply arrives one day, and the creator watches as she takes the soul of a sickly child. the child is the first to die, and the goddess strokes her hair gently before she lifts her soul into her arms like how the humans hold their babies. 

the creator is sad, when his little creations die. he thinks the goddess is sad, too. but they live good lives first, lives of all too human emotion and stubborn tenacity, and so he lets her take them. 

(the goddess thanks him for his creations. he asks why, and she says they keep her company in her realm, where she was so lonely before. their deaths are not so sad anymore, even though they hurt, even if many of them are a bit too early or a bit too violent. it is not so surprising, really, when the creator and the goddess fall in love.) 

the humans keep going to war. the humans keep being unpredictable. the humans keep on, keep on, keep on. 

the blood god is the god of war, and it should be no surprise to any historian that it is the third god ever created, not at phil’s hands but out of the souls of all those humans fallen to messy warfare. the creator can not bear to watch his little humans go to war and so he leaves it to the blood god, lets it plant strategies in generals’ heads and ferry fallen soldiers the godess’ way. then the blood god asks for a brother and so phil makes chaos out of fire and revelry and laughter, and he follows on the blood god’s heels to every battle. 

more and more come, over the millennia. the humans become entranced with art and song and so phil makes a god. the humans worship the sun and moon and so the sun and moon answer them. the humans travel to other realms and the gods of those realms follow them back, the wither crawling out of a portal and the ender dragon sending her own children. the trade goes both ways - the blood god enters the nether portal and falls in love with the inhabitants there, and the piglins quite like him too. 

and of course, the humans have their own creations. the humans find magic and so come hybrids, the humans die and so come spirits, the humans are cursed and so come monsters (not that phil loves them any less), the other gods become just as attached as the creator is and so come demigods. 

and the creator, when it comes down to it, is quite proud. 

* * *

the creator, of course, becomes more attached to some mortals than others. 

he always loves the goddess. she is always his wife and he will never, ever have another like her. but the creator loves his creations, wants to help them, protect them, and it is only inevitable that some will fall more directly into his care than others will. 

there are many, over the years. little humans who are outcasted, who are hurt, who the creator finds and gives shelter with his great wings. they do not run from him, and through them he learns of family, of human love and fear and joy and hate. he learns how their emotions burn within them, how some of them keep them close to their chest until they explode and others let them guide every step they take. some call him their father, and he smiles and calls them his children with love warming his heart. 

the first: a little girl who was cursed by one of those who learned magic, not because of something she did but because of the actions of her father, who left debts unpaid. now power she can not control burns in her, twists her features into those resembling an animal’s, makes other humans push her away. he saved her from their frightened hands and tried to raise her, and while he insisted she owed him nothing she still gave him a gift: his name. 

she finds it in a storybook, one she bought herself with the coins phil has no use for but collects to give her when she does her chores. 

(her chore list: do kind deeds, laugh, play, love. she earns several coins a day.) 

she insists that the man in the book named  _ philippos  _ looks like him, and so he says  _ okay, then i am philippos,  _ and over time, over dozens of children, he becomes phil. he becomes father. 

* * *

wilbur is one of the children who stays with him longest. 

the mortals call the year 1897. phil's little people have started inventing machinations not even he could have imagined when he first created them, and he is filled with pride at their intelligence and determination, even though there are plenty of problems arising. he believes in their ability to figure it all out, eventually. 

phil finds the siren baby on the beach. he hears the wailing first, thick with uncontrolled magic that smells of saltwater, and phil follows it to a part of the beach hidden behind big rocks where the baby must have washed ashore. 

he's tiny, barely older than a newborn, skin tinged blue and eyes yellow with slit pupils. there are little claws at the ends of his fingers and his hair is stiff with saltwater. he's coated in a thick layer of sand and blood - someone else's blood, because there are no injuries to be found on him. 

phil isn't one to fall prey to siren songs, but even he can't deny this one's strength. it's surprisingly potent for a baby - or for anyone at all. 

"hello, little one," phil murmurs, crouching down next to the baby. he spreads his wings, shading the slightly sunburnt boy from the sun, and the baby blinks up at him. his wails die out into little sniffles as he reaches for phil with his pudgy little hands, for some reason unafraid, and it's no wonder that phil ends up pulling the baby into his arms and carrying him home. 

he does not fly, because baby humans are not very good for flying. instead he holds him to his chest, digging slightly into his mind for his story as he walks to the home he has claimed in this part of the world - new york, the humans call it. he Looks into his memories and sees harpoons and sirens at the end of them, an injured female siren frantically swimming her baby towards shore- 

phil stops Looking. that's enough of the story. he presses a kiss to the baby's forehead, and sets to work cleaning him up. 

* * *

techno comes in 1916. chaos and the blood god are having a ball, the goddess is overworked, and phil is absolutely dismayed at all of it. 

(the siren keeps singing her songs, and phil’s baby - his wilbur - babbles back. sirens don’t age the same as humans, and wilbur is best described as roughly four or five in human years. some mornings phil finds him stood in front of the sink or bathtub or just a glass of water, trilling little songs to the goddess of his people. phil always sinks to his knees next to him and says hello to the water, and the water ripples in response.) 

he finds him in france, watches as he stumbles out of a soldier-filled bar, holding a shaking hand over a fang filled mouth. he squints and sees the man’s calm aura swirl and change until it’s the blood god’s, bright red and angry. 

_ ah _ , phil thinks,  _ one of the blood god’s chosen _ . not a demigod but a mortal, chosen, picked out of the millions of soldiers as one of the blood god’s favorites. 

he watches the man brace a hand against the wall, taking heavy breaths that make the shiny pins on his uniform shift - phil could never hope to know what any of them stand for. phil worries but stays back. this is the blood god’s disciple, after all, and unless-

there’s a man walking by. a little drunk, he bumps into the soldier, and phil could have predicted it, even without his godly powers: the soldier pouncing, screaming, lips pulled in a snarl over his fangs and growing-in tusks, pulling his hand back in preparation to claw at his throat. 

and this is where the blood god’s jurisdiction and phil’s overlap. so in half a second phil is across the street, stepping in between them, golden wings raised, and just enough of his power rolls off of him for the blood god to visibly stutter. 

the drunk man, who will most definitely have some wild stories for his friends come sober-times, takes his opportunity to run away. the blood god tilts the soldier’s head. “what do you want, prime?” 

“well, mate, you can’t go around killing people.” 

“kinda my job.” 

“this isn’t the battlefield.” 

the blood god glares at him for a moment, but thankfully seems to retreat. the angry reds sink back into the soldier, leaving behind blues and pinks which now swirl with fear. the soldier doubles over wheezing, hands on his knees, seemingly unperturbed by the god standing directly in front of him. not that phil cares. he just steps to the man’s side, a hand on his back, and tries to make sure his own aura is comforting and calm. 

“you alright, mate?” 

“are you  _ god? _ ” 

the soldier squints at him. phil shrugs. “guess so.” 

“oh.” the soldier looks back to the ground, once again unperturbed by that. phil’s lips quirk up. 

“so, unless you want to accidentally murder someone tonight, why don’t we go sit down and talk somewhere?” 

* * *

  
  


technoblade, it turns out, was seventeen when he joined the american military and is eighteen now. not necessarily the most legal thing, but his family needed the money. 

he can’t return to them, now. not as he is. he tells phil, after a glass of whiskey, that he’s too scared of the god that came to him on the battlefield and whispered to him to  _ kill, kill,  _ and doesn’t stop whispering when he steps off the field. 

phil claps a hand on his shoulder and promises his help. 

(the gods’ chosen humans are semi-immortals. phil is stuck with techno for a couple centuries. 

not that he’s complaining.) 

* * *

there are others, of course. children who come and go. 

one of them is tommy. 

phil met schlatt - a social worker - a long while ago. schlatt’s had “run ins” with gods and hybrids and the like, he says, and phil never asks what exactly that entailed. schlatt is not the most legal of men, phil’s gathered, but phil has no loyalty to humans’ laws, so he turns a blind eye to the strange herbs and the under-the-table guns. after all, schlatt is the one who finds not-quite-human kids in the foster system and sends those he can phil’s way so they can be properly cared for. 

(besides, despite the man’s rough exterior and his… personal troubles, phil can see it in his aura. he’s not a bad man.) 

phil’s home is dreadfully empty, at the moment. it has been for a few years, barring a few short stints. the children he fosters tend not to stay long, eventually moving on to a happy, at least semi-human family. phil misses them when they leave but is glad to see them find their place. 

he does miss a full home. of course, there’s techno and wilbur - wilbur now old enough to pass as a human teenager, making his way through highschool, and techno managing to pass as a slightly-baby-faced twenty year old in college. they’re happy and content, and phil spends his days sewing or knitting or cooking or projecting himself into the astral plane to look over his creations. 

then schlatt calls one morning. it’s chilly out -  _ september,  _ phil remembers they call it, but there’ve been so many names for the months that phil finds it hard to keep track of. 

schlatt calls about a kid, phil asks if he’s human, then schlatt is panicking and saying  _ the kid heard you  _ as said kid cusses up a storm that makes phil laugh. then he calls a second time later that night and explains- 

“so, we found the kid in a cult. he’s, like, traumatized to shit.” 

“again: is he human?”    
  
“yeah. nothing weird, ‘sides the cult thing. no one else is gonna take him right now, though. kid’s fucked.” 

(despite his harsh language, phil hears the anger at the people who won’t take the kid in, the sympathy for the kid himself. phil’s reminded he was right, to put his trust in schlatt.) 

“...okay. i’ll take him in long as he needs.” 

“it should only be a few weeks-” 

“not a problem, schlatt.” 

a chuckle. “i know. never is, with you. talk later.” 

schlatt ends the call with little more than that and a sharp beep. phil sighs and goes to talk with wilbur about getting glamours made for the three of them. 

(he doesn’t expect the whirlwind the kid ends up being. not that he would change tommy for the world.) 


	2. tommy in da cult what crimes will he commit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tommy is in a cult, then he isn't. he prefers the cult.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oonga boonga 
> 
> tw // fuckin uh cults, implied child abuse (nothing super explicit but definitely some) 
> 
> da whole gang b here : ) shit i forgot to add quackity to the tagsg
> 
> ik i said next chapter not until next week but . whatever okay
> 
> absolutely none of the sstuff on the foster care system or legal system or anything is accurate and thats ok this is an alternate reality where sirens and fox hybrids exist

tommy hates ritual. 

for the most part, weekly ritual is drab and dull. it makes tommy yawn and almost drop his candles until george kicks him in the shin or dream snaps at him. it’s a lot of chanting and shit, and tommy always has to spend hours studying exactly what he’s meant to do or say so he isn’t in trouble the next few days after the ritual. 

but towards the end, everyone suddenly seems to remember that they’re here for the  _ chaos god.  _ shit gets set on fire, people shout and dance and grab tommy by the hands and swing him around until he’s dizzy. they shove candles into his hands and he waves them around in the air to make pictures out of light, then throws them into the bonfire in between them all. people laugh and punch each other until the grass is blood spattered but there are never any hard feelings because every week, they all have the time of their fucking lives. 

for a few minutes, they are not humans, not themselves. they are the chaos god and the chaos god is them, and tommy relishes those few minutes and spends every week waiting for saturday night. 

“it’s a bacchanal,” dream had told him during one of his first tutoring sessions when he was first adopted. “that’s what the ancient greeks called it - losing yourself in the party. becoming one with dionysus.” 

he’d leaned across the table, a sharp grin below the edge of his mask. “when people speak of dionysus, tommy, they speak of the god who chose  _ us _ . remember that.” 

tommy did. 

he was seven, and he held the knowledge close as he stepped into the field for his first bacchanal when he was finally allowed to join them, months after his adoption. dream had promised him that as long as he did not step out of line with his superiors he would never be told to reign his chaos in, and that promise held true as, for the first time in a very long time, tommy was truly elated. 

this ritual they’re in now, though - perhaps the most important of tommy’s life - is not that. 

it’s just him and dream. and george, sap, and bad. those three are only here to observe - to stand witness to the glory of what’s about to happen. 

he is thirteen, and tommy is finally stepping into his place at chaos’s other side. 

they aren’t in a field, this time. they’re in the dim basement of dream’s house. the only light is a shitty, flickering lightbulb. tommy sits in the center of the four of them’s loose circle as dream exposits about how awesome chaos is and how awesome that makes tommy and dream, or whatever. tommy thinks it’s meant to enrapture him, fill him with awe. it doesn’t work, because tommy can barely pay attention, too caught up in the way his bones vibrate with excitement.

the most important ritual is simple, in the end. dream’s cold hands settle over tommy’s, guiding them as together they light candles and incense and pour libations. then his chilly grip settles on tommy’s wrists like handcuffs and together, they mutter the prayers. 

it’s simple, in the end. how one second tommy and dream are just standing there, foreheads bent towards each other, and the next tommy is screaming, shoving his face against dream’s shoulder,  _ screaming _ , clawing at dream’s arms,  _ screaming-  _

* * *

he wakes hours later to bad shaking him. 

the first thing he does is try to scream again because the fire that came to him in the ritual still burns his veins, but bad shoves a hand over his mouth and hushes. tommy bites. bad flinches but does not move his hand. 

“up, sweetheart,” he says, “up, up.” the side of bad’s face is illuminated by moonlight through the window. tommy wonders why he’s here, and not in his room. tommy’s bee asleep since just after the sun went down but he figures it must be far past curfew.

tommy lets himself be dragged out of bed and down the hall. “what?” he asks, again and again - “what, what?” but bad does not answer. 

bad always answers tommy’s questions, even if sometimes he coats sugar over his answers thick enough to be tooth rotting. bad always answers questions, just like how bad is always gentle when he bandages tommy’s stray wounds up after bacchanals or after dream gets angry, just like how bad always smiles, just like how bad never curses. 

“shit,” slips out of bad’s frowning mouth as a door opens. tommy feels like he’s going to pass out. it might be from the pure chaos in his blood but he thinks it’s more likely to be from the absolute blasphemy of bad cursing. 

dream’s there. 

he must have been asleep, because his head is ducked as he fumbles his mask on, his hair flattened on one side. still, tommy is frightened for not just himself but bad when dream turns to them. 

it’s lights out, after all. they’re breaking the rules. 

“...bad?” dream asks, “what are you doing? tommy should be in bed. he had a big day.” 

as if summoned by dream’s words, tommy whimpers as his muscles spasm a moment, still getting used to his newly gifted power. bad turns to him a moment, worry pulling at his face. 

dream tilts his head. “he’s hurting, bad,” he says. then he spreads his arms wide, gesturing towards himself with his hands, and says, “c’mere, toms.” 

tommy tries to step forward. bad holds him back. 

tommy turns to him with big eyes, fear gripping his chest.  _ oh, christ,  _ he thinks. dream’s going to beat bad half to death. 

“ _ bad _ ,” he hisses, “what’s wrong?” 

the windows light up blue and red. the hall goes silent. 

dream’s arms fall to his sides, fists clenching.  _ we’ve really done it now,  _ tommy thinks. 

“where are george and sapnap?” dream asks slowly. 

bad is silent. tommy feels his hand trembling. 

“tell me where the fuck they are, bad.” 

“they… they went to a payphone.” 

tommy jolts. a  _ phone -  _ dream is going to have their heads when they come back. trying to use a  _ phone _ . maybe that’s something expected from tommy or one of the other kids, but george and sapnap? dream’s seconds? it feels like blasphemy. it feels like betrayal. 

  
“who did they call, bad?” 

in another room, someone bangs on the front door. 

* * *

tommy hates his lawyer. 

his lawyer wears basketball shorts and makes stupid jokes in spanish and calls him big t, and tommy hates how every time he sees him he brings him gifts of snacks and little trinkets he was never allowed to have before. tommy hates him until the day he says he does not have to testify against dream if he doesn’t want to, not really.

they sit in their office. there are posters of bands tommy doesn’t recognize taped to the walls and a guitar in the corner. quackity lounges in his chair like he’s watching TV. across the desk, tommy holds his chocolate milk close and draws his knees to his chest. quackity does not chide him for getting his dirty shoes all over his armchair, probably because the armchair could have only cost about twenty dollars on craigslist and is covered in dubious stains. 

yes, it’s all very professional. 

tommy has asserted for roughly the hundredth time that he absolutely will not be testifying against dream in court. quackity rubs his forehead with the heel of his palm and says, “okay, kid.” 

“...okay?” 

“okay. you don’t have to.” 

“...okay.” 

and tommy finds himself liking quackity just a bit. because tommy does not want to stand in front of all of them, in front of those who have been his family since he was eight, and testify against his brother. he can not. he will not. 

his lawyer is quackity, and maybe he is just a  _ little bit _ okay, and he introduces him to his new social worker. 

his social worker is a bitch. 

his social worker is schlatt, a bitch, a little fucking bitch, and he is the one who drives tommy to and from the group home and meetings with quackity, because those are the only places he goes. 

the court case is still moving along slowly, slowly, and tommy feels like it will drag along for forever. he is tired of sitting in the back of a court room, watching george and sapnap and bad’s hands shake as they slander dream. he is proud as dream defends himself excellently. 

there are more than a few occasions where dream steps towards him in the court room. where tommy reaches out a hand and wonders if dream feels this same fire that burns under his skin, hears the same whispers in his ears. dream reaches back, and then schlatt steps in between them. 

tommy hates schlatt more than any of them, probably, even more than george or sap or bad. it’s something about the man’s easy grin and the way tommy will say  _ i miss dream  _ or something to that extent and schlatt’s shoulders will tense. 

somehow, schlatt introduces tommy to someone he hates even more. 

the bluetooth on schlatt’s phone is connected to the car speaker, and he does not bother to disconnect it as he calls phil one day when they are driving home from the courthouse. 

tommy hears it when he says, “ _ look, phil, we really need to find someone who’ll take him,”  _ and he hears it when philza says “ _ well, is he human?”  _ and schlatt frantically disconnects bluetooth and brings it up to his ear and says  _ “fuck, dude, he’s right next to me, talk later, holy fuck.” _

tommy is bristling even though he doesn’t fully get it. his veins are still made of molten. a voice he does not recognize whispers in his ears, trying desperately to get him to understand it. “ _ is he human?”  _ this phil character had asked. he could not have possibly known that tommy is not sure what the answer is anymore. 

he cusses up a storm and hopes to god phil heard it. 

* * *

once, tommy visits bad in his holding cell. 

not george and sapnap, not yet. betrayal still turns tommy ice cold when he thinks about them. he thinks it should when it comes to bad, too. but it’s so hard to be mad at him. so hard, after years of gentle hands and twice a week tutoring. 

“don’t you want out of here?” tommy asks. 

bad is smiling. “you have no idea how much i want out,” he says, “but you also have no idea how worth it it was to get you out of dream’s hands, sweetheart.” 

bad does not stop smiling, even as tommy cusses him out and screams and schlatt finally drags him away. bad does not stop smiling. he only whispers  _ thank you, thank you  _ as tommy continues screaming all the way down the hall, as schlatt returns to let him know whose care tommy is being put in, even if only for a couple weeks. 

_ thank you, thank you.  _

tommy doesn’t see him again for months. 

* * *

tommy hates phil immediately. 

he lives in the middle of the woods, which is the first red flag, frankly. (says the boy from the cult in the middle of rural ohio.) he opens the front door before tommy and schlatt even make it up the front steps. 

tommy does not like him. does not like the gentle way he smiles or the shiny beads decorating the little braids in his hair or the dumbass bucket hat pulled over his head. he does not like the way phil says “nice to meet you, mate,” and extends his hand. 

tommy does not take it. 

* * *

schlatt leaves with a hand ruffling tommy’s hair and a “be safe, kid.” tommy yells after him to fuck off. the phil asshole snorts. 

phil leads him inside. the cabin is bigger than tommy had realized. the interior isn’t ostentatious but it’s certainly comfortable, the furniture nice and plush. there are pictures hanging on the wall. some of them are in black and white - tommy squints at them and phil laughs and says, “family heirlooms, you know.” 

instead of answering, tommy says, “are you rich?” 

philza shrugs. “i guess. do you want to meet techno and wilbur?” 

“who’s that?” 

“my sons.” 

tommy wrinkles his nose, sneering. of course there are other kids here. “no. the fuck kind of name is techno?” 

“that’s my name.” 

tommy startles, whirling around wide eyed. a tall man - big man - very tall, very big, tommy does not like it - stands in the doorway that must lead to the kitchen. he’s got a nose ring and his hair is dyed pink. he rubs at his mouth like it hurts. 

(tommy was never allowed to do his hair how he liked, or get piercings when he asked. dream said he wouldn’t be allowed to until he stepped up to the chaos god’s side. 

it’s very abrupt, how he realizes he could, now, if he was with dream. the realization makes the resentment in his chest burn white hot.) 

tommy glares at the pink asshole. to his face he asks, “the fuck kind of name is techno?” 

“uh, it’s technoblade, actually.” 

tommy stares at him. techno _ blade  _ stares back. there is silence. then phil awkwardly clears his throat and tommy just says, “bitch.” 

“okay, then.” 

then the Very Big Man is pushed backwards (his face barely shifts) and another boy, maybe a few years older than tommy, arrives. his cheeks are flushed blue - makeup? tommy’s never seen anybody wearing blue blush. 

in a near melodic voice the new boy says, “wow, you really are-” 

he stops short. philza and techno have both leveled him with glares. tommy squints at them. the boy blinks then says, “short.” 

“what.” 

“you really are short.” 

tommy’s cheeks go bright red. he ducks his head, shoulders hunching, and grumbles, “have you know i’m the tallest in my class, fuckin’ dickhead.”

he does not mention that he is in a class of one.

silence, again. 

“...aaaalright then!” tommy jumps as phil’s hands land on his shoulders and quickly, the hands retract. tommy glares out of the corner of his eye, but lets philza steer him up the stairs. “goodnight, boys, talk more in the morning!” 

tommy stomps up the stairs and lets philza lead him down the hall. his room is the last one, farthest from the stairs. farthest from the front door. from escape. 

“it’s not the best,” philza says, “but while you’re here, you can decorate however you’d like.” 

tommy slams the door in his face. 

he hates his new room, too, because it does not sit comfortably in between george’s room and sapnap’s (even though he hates them now, he reminds themself, he hates them). he hates his new ‘brothers’. he hates being here. 

he just wants dream back. 

  
(chaos whispers in his ears.  _ fire,  _ he begs,  _ destruction,  _ and it takes everything in tommy not to give it to him.) 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> badboyhalo is the loml 
> 
> uhhh please leave a kudos and a comment if u enjoyed : ) thnak u


	3. tommy in da school what crimes will he commit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> tommy goes to school and then promptly leaves school, but not before making a friend and getting in a fight. also: i still don't understand the legal system

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey if anyone here understands anything to do with law just ufcking pretend u dont ok. u dont and thats ok. i dont want any comments about how im wrong i know im wrong but also in this au god's name is philza minecraft so i think i can have some leeway /lh
> 
> if there r typos no there arent
> 
> this chapter's tw // references to abuse, victim of abuse excusing said abuse, very light bullying, implied panic attacks. a teddy bear gets its head set on fire too 
> 
> also of course as always a big good nice shoutout to anyastasia and motheyes <3

when tommy wakes up, there’s a flaming teddy bear next to him. 

he barely stifles a scream, shooting up in bed. it’s clutched in his hand, which is on fire, and so is its head. 

“ _fuck,_ chaos,” tommy hisses, struggling to put out his own hand. thank the gods, it works, and then he looks around frantically for something inflammable to put it out in and lands on - the bathroom is across the hall, he thinks. the sink is ceramic - is ceramic flammable? he genuinely has no idea, but he knows the bedsheets _certainly_ are, so he’s willing to risk it. 

chaos splutters. _it’s not my fault you had a nightmare!_

he scrambles out of the bed, nearly tripping over his backpack with the fire hazard still in his hand. he has no idea what time it is but thanks the gods he doesn’t see anyone in the hallway as he ducks out of the room and into- 

“what the fuck.” 

tommy stills. techno stands in the door to his own bedroom, hair falling messily against his shoulders, squinting at tommy as his glasses hang from his fingers. the teddy bear’s head continues to burn in tommy’s hand. 

“good morning.” 

techno wipes his glasses on the edge of his shirt and shoves them on his face. then he squints at tommy again. “is that teddy bear burning?” 

“good morning. you are a bitch. why are you so tall? it’s not natural, you know. you should-” 

techno takes a deep breath, turns on his heel, and goes back into his room. “too early for this.” 

  
  


* * *

  
  


breakfast is a dreadful affair. 

for starters, it’s all too quiet. breakfast at home was always loud: twenty to thirty something followers and chosen servants of the god of chaos, clamoring over each other for the last pancake or the butter. not to mention the god whispering in their ears, urging them to pour salt in someone’s drink or dump jelly in someone’s hair or just flip the damn table. it was something akin to a battlefield. 

but breakfast in phil’s home is unsettlingly quiet. there’s wilbur humming to himself as he rushes to finish an assignment due today, there’s pages rustling as techno flips through a thick book, there’s the sizzle of phil cooking. but there’s no yelling or fighting, and it’s so underwhelming it makes tommy sweat. he much prefers the constant anticipation of getting stabbed with a butter knife or an egg cracked on his head. 

of course, all that’s not to say chaos isn’t still there. quite the opposite - tommy’s god hovers at his back, hands cold on his shoulders, and whispers. 

tommy can’t make it all out. chaos is being quiet, for whatever reason. for now he only catches snippets: _salt - tea - scream - fun!_

tommy resists the urge to tell him to shut the fuck up. 

“tommy,” phil says, turning to him, and quite suddenly chaos is retreating. “you’re already enrolled in school here. now, you don’t have to go if you don’t want to, but-” 

“i’ll go,” tommy says just as techno says, “he’s going.” 

tommy shoots him a look. the man shrugs and says, “education’s important.” 

tommy blinks, squinting at the man who currently has long pink hair and a giant gold nose ring, and ultimately decides it’s not important. he supposes appearances aren’t everything. 

(it’s not like he’ll be staying here long. either he’ll get kicked out, or dream will come and get him as soon as he can.) 

phil blinks. “you will? you don’t want to wait?” 

“nah,” tommy says simply. in truth, he just doesn’t want to be in this house all day. he’s not sure which one of them work or go to school, and he doesn’t want to take the chance of being stuck with even one of them for the next… however many hours. he’s not exactly sure how long a school day is. 

so he asks - “how long is it? a couple hours?” 

wilbur looks up briefly from his paper. when tommy cranes his neck to get a look at it, he sees all sorts of complicated math problems that make his head swim. chaos, tucked away in his mind, says, _rip it up, that’ll be so funny, he worked so hard on it, just-_

tommy’s fingers twitch. 

but before he can reach it wilbur says, “have you never been to school before?” and tommy redirects his hand to grab his glass of water in a strangely contorted way. techno looks up from his book for a second to blink at his pretzel-twisted hand but seems to ultimately be uninterested because he looks right back down. 

tommy considers the correct answer. the _truth_ is that he’s never been. bad would tutor him in things like basic math and reading and science twice a week, and dream would tutor him in history and more religious matters. things like which gods throughout history might have been facets of chaos, what were proper offerings to give, the other gods of their pantheon - prime, the blood god, the siren, herobrine, and countless other names - and how to respect them. 

if he says no, that could push their buttons. that could get him another step closer towards leaving. but then maybe wilbur would take pity, and he’d have to deal with the boy glued to his hip all day. alternatively, he could say yes, and whatever incompetence he will undoubtedly have with school things will be attributed to him acting up. that could certainly push buttons, too. 

but also, tommy’s a bad liar. 

“...no,” tommy answers after a long, conveniently placed sip of this weird strawberry juice phil handed him. (it tastes really good - sugary and sweet - but tommy will not be admitting that, thanks.) “i was, ah, homeschooled.” 

wilbur hums. “well, then, i’ll have to help you out,” he says, and tommy feels nothing but dread. 

  
  


* * *

  
  


(the drive to school goes something like this: 

techno: “thomas burned a teddy bear this morning.” 

wilbur: “...what?” 

tommy: “what the fuck did you just call me?” 

techno: “thomas. isn’t that your name?” 

wilbur: “you _burned_ a _teddy bear_?” 

tommy: “my fucking name is tommy, you bitch-” 

wilbur: “please tell me why you burned a fucking teddy bear-” 

techno: “he just set its head on fire, you know. looked like some kind of sacrifice.” 

tommy: “i was stressed!” 

techno: “makes sense.” 

wilbur: “no, it doesn’t-” 

techno: “did you finish your math homework?” 

wilbur: “ _fuck-!”_ ) 

* * *

tommy quickly finds that he is very, very far out of his depth with this whole _school_ thing. 

school is a beast which tommy has never faced. he steps out of techno’s car, the man drives off, and he is left with no protection but wilbur as he stares up at the dull brick face of the monster. entering its halls is akin to entering its maw, the rows of lockers turning into sharp teeth in tommy’s eyes. 

not to mention the _people._

since he was six or so, he only left home once every couple months on field trips. visiting temples and other groups, museums, and the like. (once or twice a game store, if tommy was very good.) he had to focus on his studies, dream said. 

in all his life, tommy can count on one hand - _maybe_ two, if he reaches - how many times he’s been around more than, say, fifty people for an extended period of time. there were only the rest of his Family and sometimes other devotees to chaos who would come from all over for dream’s bacchanals. dream _is_ the famed favorite servant of chaos, after all. 

(tommy is meant to take his place, one of these days.) 

it’s easy for wilbur to lead him through the halls and crowds to the middle school area. (“town’s too small for a separate middle and high school,” wilbur explains, but tommy hardly knows what the difference between the two is meant to be.) he leads him to his locker. (he has to teach tommy how to open it.) he points tommy towards his first block class. (he has to explain how blocks work.) 

then, as tommy is staring in blatant confusion at his schedule - _“what the fuck is pre-algebra?_ ” - wilbur shouts. tommy jolts, head snapping up ( _something like fear makes his hands burn and he focuses everything he has on keeping chaos’s fire from appearing)_. wilbur is waving happily to someone. tommy’s not sure who at first, but soon a boy emerges from the crowd. small, with a mop of brown curls, freckled cheeks, and a shirt a size or two too big. he shuffles over to them and gives a big old smile that’s so sweet tommy thinks he gets a cavity. 

tommy wishes he could grin like that. big and wide, with gums and teeth and eyes squinted until they’re barely there. 

he’d blame it on his braces if anyone asked why he doesn’t. the truth is the fangs. two of his top canines fell out a couple days after the binding ritual, and fangs like a goddamned vampire’s have been taking their place. they don’t hurt, but they certainly make his gums sensitive, and tommy’s not keen on having anyone ask questions about them. 

tommy’s broken from ruminating on his godsdamn teeth when wilbur speaks - “this is tubbo,” he says, “he can help you out the rest of the day.” 

tommy bristles. “i can do it myself, thanks.” 

wilbur and tubbo exchange a look. wilbur opens his mouth, ready to disagree, but tubbo raises a placating hand. “if that’s what you want to do, then.” 

wilbur’s already leaving, one hand raised in a wave. “goodbye, children!” 

the bell rings. tommy takes a deep breath and makes his way to class. 

* * *

it takes no less than a minute and a half for tommy to freak. in the rapidly emptying hall, he turns back to tubbo, who still stands next to tommy’s locker. tubbo raises his eyebrows.

  
  
“you need help?” 

“...yeah.” 

tommy can only hang his head as tubbo leads him to his first class of the day. 

* * *

they get to class early, so tubbo, of course, tries to start a conversation. 

tommy can’t focus, really. he’s too distracted by how completely unfamiliar everything is: how tiny his desk is, the bright posters on the wall, the _noise_ of the rest of the class’s chatter. tommy simply can not work in these conditions. where is his dark library, his shrine to chaos, his- 

his teacher. 

tommy shakes his head against memories of bad. that’s not the part he misses. it’s _not._ not when bad is nothing but a traitor. 

chaos is draped over his back. _i miss bad,_ he whispers, _let’s go find him, i miss him-_

“ _no,_ ” tommy hisses, to which chaos answers _that’s okay, dream’s got him anyway._

tommy stills, eyebrows drawing low. “what do you-” 

“tommy?” 

he startles, turning to tubbo, who’s blinking at him from the desk next to him. “tommy, who’re you talking to?” 

the god leaning over tommy’s back giggles. tommy looks frantically around the room for an answer before he settles on, “i was jus’ singing a song.” 

tubbo stares at him a moment but seems to buy it because he finally gives a smile and says, “alright, then. well, i was just saying, we’re going over square roots right now-” 

“the fuck is a square root.” 

and then tubbo is digging in his bag, pulling out a few pieces of notebook paper and handing them over. “here, you can use my notes! i’m pretty good at square roots, i don’t mind not having them for a class.” 

tommy stares down at the notes with furrowed eyebrows, crumpled pieces of paper with equations and misspelled words scrawled on them. in the margins, there are doodles of bees and- 

tommy gasps, leaning across the aisle to show tubbo the paper, pointing at one of the drawings. “is that a triforce? from _zelda_?” 

tubbo grins back. “ _yes!_ ” he says, “which games have you played?” 

only one, is the truth - _ocarina of time_ , on his shitty secondhand (or maybe thirdhand) 3DS dream got him for his tenth birthday. it was the only game he had and he must have played it a hundred times. 

no one back home cared about _zelda_ . bad was the only one who would listen when tommy gushed about it, but he didn’t really know what he was talking about. all tommy’s been able to do when he thinks about his favorite game is vibrate in silence or ramble about it to someone who doesn’t care until he inevitably annoys the shit out of them, and now here’s someone who _knows_ about it- 

“ _ocarina of time_ !” tommy says, “i haven’t played any of the others, but it’s my _favorite game in the whole fucking world_ because it’s _sick as shit_ and who’s your favorite character? i think navi’s neat-” 

“navi?” tubbo laughs, “your favorite is _navi?_ ” 

tommy makes a face of faux rage. “the fuck, you don’t like navi?” 

“navi’s _annoying._ ” 

“well, then, who’s your favorite, huh?” 

“mipha!” 

tommy racks his brain. he knows _every_ character from _ocarina of time_ , but he doesn’t remember a mipha… he huffs. “you’re making up names, now.” 

“no i’m not, she’s from _breath of the wild!_ she’s the best!” and then tubbo’s eyes light up. “tell you what, this weekend, you can come over to my place and use my nintendo to play it!” 

and then tommy looks at tubbo a moment - the freckles on his cheeks and his big grin and kind eyes - and he can’t help but grin back, unafraid of the fangs growing in. tubbo might see them but if he does, he doesn’t even blink, already opening his mouth to say something else- 

“wazzat?” 

and tubbo flinches as a hand comes down on the paper tommy holds. tommy’s eyes snap up to a smirking boy. 

“my-” tubbo stammers, “my notes. for class.” 

“really? that’s nice, i lost my notes.” 

and tommy snarls as the kid _tugs._ uh-uh, no way, tommy is _not_ letting this kid take tubbo’s notes - he holds tight, glaring at the boy above him, whose smug face rapidly changes to annoyance. 

“let it go,” tommy snaps. 

the boy blinks down at him slowly, calculating. then, “all i’m doing is taking a look. who are you?” 

“i’m tommy,” he spits, “let go.” the boy hasn’t _said_ anything that bad, but tommy can tell he’s bad news from the sneer on the boy’s face, the way tubbo had flinched and how he looks at him now with big, wide eyes. 

the boy tugs harder, and the paper rips in half. chaos scrambles to full wakefulness, already starting to whisper in tommy’s ear. 

the boy laughs, sharp and belittling - “one of that weirdo’s foster kids? christ, you’re like, the tenth i met-” he looks to tubbo. “you ever notice how the only people you can make friends with are fuckin’ orphan kids who leave in a month?” 

chaos takes tommy’s hands.

* * *

brothers are bound in blood, it seems, because when tommy finds himself sitting in front of the principal’s office twenty minutes later, holding a tissue to his nose, tubbo’s arm is comforting around his shoulder. 

tommy can feel the god sitting next to him. chaos laughs and laughs, recounting the fight - _and then he was like, pow! and you were like, fuck off! and it was so funny! -_ and tommy wonders why he’s bound to a god that’s such a damn child. 

tommy shoots the specter a look, even though he can’t really _see_ him, just feel him sitting next to him. if tubbo weren’t here, he would tell the god to shut the fuck up. 

_silence, god!_ he wants to say. instead he turns to tubbo with a grin that does _not_ show his teeth, he will _not_ be having a conversation about his fangs today, thanks, and says, “he won’t be bothering you again, tubs.” 

“tubs?” tubbo asks, eyebrows raised, then carries on with, “i don’t think you scared him away. you got a bit… pummeled.” 

tommy sticks out his tongue. “i had that guy bleeding!” 

“that’s n-” 

“ _tommy!_ ” 

it’s wilbur, rounding the corner in a sprint, beanie nearly falling off his head. his wide eyes meet tommy’s gaze and instantly, tommy panics. 

tommy doesn’t know the _rules_ here, he realizes suddenly. not just here, at the school, but he doesn’t know the rules with phil’s family. he knows what his punishment would be with dream: none. unless he was fighting dream himself or someone dream explicitly didn’t want him bothering, unless he was breaking one of _dream’s_ rules in some way shape or form, there was no punishment. not from dream, and not from anyone else, because none of the elders were allowed to punish tommy except for dream. 

tommy was allowed to do whatever he wanted, unless it stepped on dream’s toes. he’s not so sure that’s how phil’s rules work. 

maybe he’ll get kicked out. that’s what he wants, after all. getting in a fight on the first day: that must call for punishment, shouldn’t it? 

maybe he’ll get kicked out, which is ideal. or maybe he’ll not be allowed dinner for a few days, or phil will add to the burn marks on his back, and that’s most definitely not what he wants. 

tommy grits his teeth. if he has to deal with it, he will. he’s done it before. it’s what he needs to do on the way to getting kicked out, to getting to _leave._ maybe they’ll send him back to dream, or one of the others, or- 

wilbur’s made it up to the two of them, now, hands on his knees as he takes a moment to catch his breath. 

“aren’t you supposed to be in class?” tubbo asks, and wilbur glares, raising a finger to tell him to _wait._ with a couple final, gasping breaths, wilbur rights himself and shifts his glare to tommy. 

“a _fight,_ ” he says, “we’ve not even gotten to lunch. we’ve not even gotten to the end of first block!” wilbur throws his hands up in the air exasperatedly and tommy is pressing himself back before he can think about it, crushing tubbo’s arm between himself and the wall. tubbo hisses, wrenching his arm out of its trap. 

tommy mutters a half hearted apology, either to tubbo or wilbur or both. his heart is hammering. he’s not sure why. 

“class?” tubbo repeats, waving his hand in a _hurry it up_ gesture. wilbur sticks his tongue out. 

“it got to me through the grapevine.” 

tommy blinks. “it’s been, like, ten minutes.” 

wilbur waves his phone in the air a bit. “my son texted me, and i quote, _hey, i think phil’s new kiddo got in a fight, i just walked by the office and he is bleeding profusely from the nose, might die, just letting you know so grandpa doesn’t cut your head off. see you at lunch._ ”

tommy blinks again. “your son.” 

tubbo bumps their shoulders together. “fundy. he’s wilbur’s freshman buddy this year and wilbur has decided he is adopting him.” 

tommy stares at the wall. he doesn’t understand high school. also, his heart is still beating against his ribcage so hard that his chest hurts. he wonders if it’s supposed to do that. 

wilbur’s sharp sigh breaks tommy from his pondering of the _get your school year off to a grrr-reat start, lions!_ posters and he looks up, carefully _not_ wide eyed. he shifts a bit as wilbur looks down at him, eyebrows furrowed. there’s something unsettling about wilbur - something about the blue tinge to his cheeks and the sing song to his voice. wilbur stares down at tommy as he seems to be thinking about something, and tommy keeps his gaze just past wilbur’s shoulder. tubbo twiddles his thumbs or some innocent shit. 

the trio’s awkward silence is shattered as the office door opens. 

the kid from before shuffles out. he glares at tubbo and tommy, but the effect is lessened by the mom dragging him by his ear. behind him comes the… someone, tommy isn’t really sure what people are called in schools. teacher? secretary? principal? queen? 

she waves tommy and tubbo in - wilbur goes to follow and she lifts her hand, glaring at him. “wilbur. you’re meant to be in class.” 

clearly, wilbur has a reputation. and clearly he’s done this dance before because he quite quickly says, “ma’am, you know how it is. my father’s just taken him in, i’m supposed to be helping him out, you know? ‘sides, my brother’s gonna come take us home.” 

the woman purses her lips. “as always, wilbur, without your father’s permission i can’t allow anyone else to bring you home as your brother isn’t listed on your paperwork-” 

wilbur shoves his hand in his pocket. tommy squints at it and wonders if he’s gonna shank her or something. “my father is just about to call, i believe.” 

and like phil was listening, the phone starts to ring. 

the teacher/secretary/vice principal/queen sighs like this is an everyday occurence and picks up the phone. “hi, mr. minecraft - yes - yes, tommy is perfectly okay - a fight with a couple of other students, yes, i - right. okay. i’ll send them home.” 

* * *

tommy spends the entire drive back to phil’s house with his back completely glued to the seat, spine ramrod straight. techno and wilbur murmur to each other in the front seat. tommy hates that he can hear it. 

not because they say anything bad. it’s nothing tommy cares about, truly - stuff about their friends and techno’s college work and wilbur complaining about his chemistry assignments. he hates it because they’re talking quietly enough that tommy _shouldn’t_ be able to hear it. but ever since the ritual, his ears have been picking up more and more- 

he turns his gaze to the seat next to him, which is suspiciously colder than it should be. “bitch,” he mouths. 

the chaos god whispers back, _what?_

tommy glares a second more and then turns to the window. “wilbur,” he asks, “how’d you get phil to call like that? it was very well timed.” 

wilbur turns, craning his head awkwardly around the seat. he grins, dangling beads from his fingers. they’re shiny, green and light blue with a heart shaped charm hanging off of them. “phil gave these to me,” he says, “i always know he can help me if i’m holding them.” techno makes some sort of noise in the back of his throat, tapping his fingers against his steering wheel. 

tommy rolls his eyes. “that’s superstition,” he says. techno snorts.

wilbur clicks his tongue. “you gotta have an open mind, kid!” 

tommy ignores him. his gaze is so focused on the blur of scenery out the window that he doesn’t notice chaos reaching forward, brushing his fingers against the beads just a bit before he disappears. 

(he doesn’t tune back in until techno pulls into a dairy queen drive-thru and wilbur shoves a milkshake into his hands. 

it’s the first milkshake tommy’s ever had.) 

* * *

when they get home, tommy freezes in the front door threshold. his blood chills, fear clawing out of his hammering heart and up his throat. 

_why are you afraid?_ he asks himself, _why are you afraid? you shouldn’t be afraid. why-_

he’s not afraid just because quackity, schlatt, and phil are all here, sitting around the paper-covered coffee table. that’s not what scares him ( _lie_ ). he is not scared of the news they may bring ( _lie_ ). he is not scared that dream could be behind bars right now, could be rotting in prison for _nothing-_

( _lie._ )

he takes a deep breath. he is not afraid. he is not afraid. he is a favorite of the god of chaos himself, there is wild magic in his soul, and he is not afraid of a shitty lawyer, a bitch of a social worker, and a weird old man. 

phil quirks his eyebrows, giving him a soft smile - when he smiles, it makes his eyes half-close. “hullo,” he says, “heard you had some trouble at school?” 

techno and wilbur have abandoned tommy for the kitchen, and now he is stranded in the front door, clutching a cold styrofoam cup to his chest. the taste of strawberry is what has his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. not fear. just strawberry. 

he examines phil, the casual way he sits, slightly slumped forward since he was looking over the papers on the table which quackity is now frantically gathering up. tommy is not as good at examining people’s faces as he is their bodies and tones. he doesn’t know what to make of phil’s smile or gentle eyes, but he knows what the kind tone means: deceit. hidden anger. if he accepts it at face value it will only come back to bite him in mockery and rough hands, so he keeps his shoulder hunched to his ears, hands so tight around the styrofoam cup he may break it. 

phil seems to understand he’s not getting a response from tommy so he continues, “that’s alright. your first day at public school, that can be rough.” 

tommy does not buy it. he looks to schlatt and quackity and glares. 

quackity coughs, standing. “hey, tommy,” he says, rifling in his pocket for something and pulling out a little box - tommy’s eyes light up. it’s one of these little mystery box things. quackity gets him one from the gas station every time he sees him, and inside tommy finds tiny unicorns and dogs and bears of different colors, and he wouldn’t admit it but they’re all tucked in the front pocket of his backpack. 

it’s stupid. the first time he saw one, tommy had literally spit in his face and said he wasn’t a child. still, tommy’s started to find himself excited for them, for the warm feeling in his chest when quackity hands him one of the boxes and a new kind of soda and chips every time. 

that doesn’t mean tommy isn’t terrified of the man who originally wanted him to testify against his family. that doesn’t mean he isn’t terrified of what it means for him to be here. 

he’s _not_ terrified, he’s _not_ scared - there is a god at his back. 

quackity steps away from the couch a bit but does not get too close to tommy, so tommy inches forward and lets go of the cup with one hand to take the box. he shoves it in his pocket quickly like someone would want to take it, then backs up to his original place behind the door. 

schlatt huffs. “kid,” he says, “look. we got some news.” 

tommy’s eyes snap to him in an instant as his heart jumps to his throat. “what is it?” he asks, taking half a step forward, “did they say he’s guilty? what was his sentence? what-” 

schlatt raises a hand. “guilty, yes. not-” his face twists. “not in jail. he had quite a bit of money.” 

tommy splutters. “well, then, if he’s not in jail, i can _go home-_ ” 

“you missed the guilty part,” schlatt corrects quickly, coldly, in a way that makes tommy want to strangle him. “he’s not allowed to be in contact with you, phil, wilbur, or techno. do you understand? if he tries to speak with you, he’s breaking the law. you have to tell us or the cops or _someone._ ” 

and tommy is all fire, he realizes. it pushes just under his skin because _chaos is angry too,_ because that is chaos’s other favorite servant and _they can’t see each other, my servants can’t be together, i can’t have them together, why, you stupid mortals, how dare you-_

tommy is going to, quite literally, combust. 

  
“ _fuck you,_ ” he spits. then he takes the steps two at a time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello !! hope u all enjoyed the chapter :) i am going to my brothers house for the weekend and wont have google docs access so the next chapter might take a few days longer :) 
> 
> i would give u some kind of "next time on open flame" but this chapter got so wildly off my original plans that it wouldnt work 
> 
> also seriously writing "mr. minecraft" fucking hurt me in my soul i hope u all nkow 
> 
> anyway uh leave a kudos and a comment please it really helps motivate authors !! also twitter is @itsluciimarii :)


	4. bad's interlude

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> bad lived a human life for fourteen years. then, he didn't.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> badboyhalo :)
> 
> sorry this took a bit to get out, i actually had it done a few days ago and then just ... did Not have time to edit it and post
> 
> also nothing in this is meant to be taken as romantic skephalo !! all platonic !! 
> 
> tw for this chapter // religion, kidnapping, murder, referenced arson that technically didn't actually happen?, child abuse, manipulation

for his first fourteen years, bad lives a completely human life. 

he and his mother and sister are not the richest, but they do not want for anything. how could they, when they have each other’s smiles to keep them going? how could they, when their mother wraps them in their arms during cold nights when they can not afford to heat their small apartment? bad does not want, not when his mother tries so hard to get him to his competitions even though she works hard hours and she sometimes purses her lips at his violent hobby.  _ knife throwing,  _ she says,  _ is not a hobby for such a nice boy,  _ to which bad shrugs and answers,  _ i guess looks can be deceiving. _

(how right he is.) 

bad does not want, not with his mother at his back, his sister at his front, and skeppy at his side. 

because of  _ course,  _ there is skeppy. 

his sister is too young to come to school with him, and so bad has skeppy to walk with. he has skeppy to laugh with, skeppy to scour goodwill with, skeppy to gush to about his mother’s kindness and sister’s songs. he has his best friend. 

he does not have many other friends, if he’s being honest. there’s always been something about him that sets him apart, makes other kids push him away no matter how nice he is. skeppy, though, was never perturbed by whatever it is that other kids disliked. and bad loves him with all his heart, because he is his  _ dearest  _ friend in the whole wide world. 

which is why the moment he loses skeppy is the moment his human life comes to an end. 

the news of skeppy’s death -  _ we think it was foul play  _ \- has bad’s phone slipping out of his hands, has him falling to his knees as skeppy’s dad’s tinny voice comes frantic through the receiver. bad must sit there a while, staring numbly at the floor, because eventually the call ends. 

there is something stirring in bad’s blood. something ice cold and desperate and not-of-this-world burning him from the inside out, something clawing up his throat, out of his mouth, making him scream, guttural and  _ painful- _

his mother throws his bedroom door open just as he explodes. 

* * *

bad’s new life begins on a stretcher. 

he wakes up, everything from the last…  _ however  _ many minutes gone. all he knows is that he is scrambling up and off the stretcher before he can fully comprehend, pushing past startled paramedics and firefighters to stare, wide eyed, at the destruction. there is hardly an apartment building left at all - there are the blackened remains of a foundation, bathtubs still standing, a fridge or two on their sides. 

“what happened?” he asks frantically, to whoever is nearby. 

“you did,” the second worst mistake of his life answers. 

bad turns, hands shaking, to the man at the front of the crowd of onlookers. the man gestures for him to come closer, and so on shaking legs, bad does. 

“what do you mean?” 

the man is wearing a mask, so that all bad can see when he tilts his head is the pitying downturn to his lips and the sway of his blond bangs.

“don’t you hear it?” the man asks, volume dropping. “there’s a god whispering in your ears. your father, i’d figure.” 

and bad stills. 

there  _ is.  _ it’s hard to pick up over the general clamor and panic around them - but then, a whisper so light that he’s surprised he  _ can  _ pick it up.  _ father  _ may not be the right word for it - the voice is not quite male and not quite female - but it does whisper:  _ my son _ ,  _ my son, what have you done, your mother, my love, what have you  _ done- __

“what have i done,” bad repeats, not to the man but to himself, his glassy gaze on the remnants of his home. 

the man leans forward over the police tape. “you’ve done what’s in your blood, child of magic,” he extends a hand over the tape, palm up, “i can teach you. chaos and the sorcerer are good friends. i’ll teach you, so this can never happen again.” 

bad turns, almost numbly, from the mess he’s made. vaguely he realizes there is no smoke in the air where there should be. “what happened to my mother, my sister-?” 

“they’re alive,” the man reassures, “but it’s not safe for you to see them as you are, is it? let me teach you.” 

(the man’s words are coated with lies and poisoned sugar. bad does not know this yet, and is young and naive enough to think no one would lie about life and death like that. he will learn quickly.)

the man’s hand remains between them. 

_ yes,  _ the voice whispers,  _ chaos, my friend, go with him- _

well. bad does not have anywhere else to go. 

* * *

the drive from the ruins in california to the farm in ohio is a long one. 

bad spends most of the drive half-out of it, curled in the backseat, knees drawn to his chest. he stares at his hands; they are still stained with soot and- 

blood. 

dream was lying, when he said bad’s mother and sister were still alive, and that understanding settles on bad and threatens to suffocate him now.

(he has claws now, he realizes, as he stares at his hands. his gums are sensitive, his teeth feel strange. there are bumps under the skin of his forehead like something is trying to push through. 

he looks in the rearview mirror once, and finds black scleras, red irises, slit pupils. he does not look again.) 

there is a point, maybe three or four hours into the drive, when bad finally finds himself tuning back into reality. dream has been talking, a little loud over the radio, but when he goes quiet he doesn’t seem like he expects a response at all. he’s probably been talking for a while. bad blinks. he feels like he’s just woken up from a fourteen hour nap. his mouth taste like ash. 

slowly, he registers the blur of scenery out the window. they’re coming up on a sign, a big one- 

_ ARIZONA,  _ it reads, and some other stuff bad’s brain is too tired to figure out. bad furrows his eyebrows. that isn’t on the way to ohio. 

“where are we going?” he asks with a dry throat. dream’s eyes - maskless, probably for the sake of avoiding a ticket - find his in the rearview. 

(bad does not know how rare it will be to see dream’s eyes after this. he does not know how until he is twenty-one he will be terrified the man will remove his mask, because if the situation is so serious that he must let bad  _ see _ the look on his face-

six years and ten months from now, bad stands motionless at the front door. he lifts his hand and hovers it over the doorknob. 

then he drops it, and shuffles back to his room. 

_ not yet, _ he mouths to himself, and lets his lips linger on  _ yet. _ )

bad wonders, at the sight of the man’s eyes, what in god’s name he’s doing in this  _ car.  _ it is two thousand and thirteen AD, isn’t it, and bad is  _ fourteen,  _ he is not so dumb as to think it is a good idea to get into a man you don’t know’s car and drive cross country with him. 

but then the voice whispers. but then there is blood on bad’s hands. but then bad is not quite human anymore, is he? 

“i’m fostering a child,” dream explains, “he’s from the UK, got adopted by a family in texas, parents in texas died. tragic, really. we’re going to pick him up.” 

bad furrows his eyebrows. “that’s sad,” he says, shakily, and tries not to dwell on the fact that he is an orphan too, now.

(he thinks he is an orphan. although there  _ is  _ the voice, which calls itself his - mother? father? his  _ parent,  _ calls him its son, and bad does not quite know what to think of that. he supposes it explains the suspicious lack of a second parent all his life.)

“quite,” dream says, but when bad looks back in the rearview, there’s a smile on his face. 

* * *

bad sleeps the whole way to texas. 

sort of. not really. it’s more like there is a disconnect between dream speaking and the car pulling into a driveway. there is a point where he and dream both go silent and bad quickly tunes back out, too distracted by the voice in his head and the strange feelings in his eyes and gums and nails and forehead, too distracted by the blood that still stains his hands. 

he wonders. is it his mother’s blood, is it his sister’s, or is it one of their neighbors’ - or is it all three? a triple goddamn whammy? 

bad is a murderer now, he thinks, even if he doesn’t remember the actual murdering thing. who else could have done it? he was one of the only people who made it out of the building unscathed, besides a few cuts and bruises. he was the one who felt rage taking him over, he was the one who can’t remember anything between the moment before the building was destroyed and afterwards.

bad is a criminal. bad deserves prison. maybe that is why he let himself climb into this man’s car. 

nonetheless. 

dream gets out of the car to go collect the foster child. bad stares at his hands. 

* * *

“bad, meet thomas,” dream says forty five minutes later, to which the kid splutters, “ _ it’s tommy! _ ” 

the kid pulls at bad’s heartstrings immediately as he clambers into dream’s backseat. (should he have a carseat, bad wonders? he looks small. he probably should, right?) tommy can’t be more than six or seven, small and skinny with a mop of blonde curls and a missing front tooth. 

and, well: bad has just been through a quite traumatic experience, and his hands are still bloodstained, and he is a murderer and an orphan and a child and terrified,  _ but.  _ tommy is an orphan and a child and probably terrified, too, and none of this is  _ his  _ fault. 

so bad does his best to pull a shaky smile. “hello, tommy,” he says as dream starts to back out of the driveway. “how old are you?” 

“six!” tommy cheers, holding up the appropriate amount of fingers. 

“that’s nice,” bad says, “i’m-” 

“so where are we going?” tommy asks, leaning forward to poke his head past the driver’s seat, and bad, over the course of the next several days, quickly finds tommy loves to talk. 

not that bad’s complaining. tommy fills the silence, and he asks every question bad hadn’t thought to:  _ what’s your last name?  _ wastak.  _ do you live with other people?  _ quite a few. we’re a group.  _ do you have any siblings?  _ no, just me.  _ do you live in a big house?  _ yes, on a farm, pretty rural.  _ with lots of animals?!  _ a few. 

when tommy goes to sleep, and bad finds himself alone with dream and his thoughts and the long stretches of nighttime highway, is when bad voices the questions he has done nothing but think of:  _ how did you find me?  _ my god told me.  _ who is your god?  _ the god of chaos.  _ you speak to him?  _ yes, i’m his chosen servant.  _ am i-?  _ you’re not a chosen anything, you’re the sorcerer’s child.  _ who is the sorcerer?  _ the god of magic. fell in love with your mother, and now here you are. 

and that is where bad pauses. 

that is where bad pauses and thinks,  _ and what about my sister? would she have been like me?  _

but her blood is in the water pipes of an oklahoma rest stop, now, and so he supposes he will never find out. 

  
  


in ohio, they pass through cincinnati. 

the diner they stop at is eerie, that strange mix of early morning dark and city light casting ominous shadows throughout the dining room. bad and tommy sit on one side of the booth and dream on the other. tommy somehow shovels chili-topped spaghetti down while rambling incessantly about nothing; on the flip side, bad’s barely even picked up his fork. 

in between tommy’s rambles dream explains his home and family: they are followers of the god of chaos, and they mostly live on the same property except for some people from other groups who come to visit. dream is the leader - the high priest. 

“like a cult?” bad asks carefully, with a tone that’s meant to be half joking but falls flat because of the way it shakes. jeez. he’s gotten himself into a cult. 

dream shakes his head. “like a church,” he says, “like a family.” 

and the two of them fall silent again, letting tommy take the reins back. bad tries to force down a forkful or two of chili spaghetti but it tastes like ash, and soon he sets down his fork and lets his gaze wander around the room. 

eventually, it lands on the tv. it's a shitty one, hanging in the corner of the room like in an old classroom, and bad has to squint to see the grainy picture, but- 

that’s his face.  _ missing teen,  _ it says,  _ suspected of arson and murder- _

the waitress blinks at the tv and then starts to turn to them, concern clear on her face.

dream bustles them out without paying for the chili. when the waitress shouts, it is only a flick of dream’s fingers and a terrifying second before she goes quiet. bad does not look back at her. 

( _ arson _ , the tv had said. somehow bad knows that is wrong. there was no fire. there was something older than fire, something ancient and ice cold.)

dream takes them home.

* * *

dream’s home is best described as _loud_.

_loud_ , and overwhelming, and it makes bad’s entire body itch to  _ go.  _ his home was always loud in the sense that they lived in the middle of the city, but inside it was always calm, always mother’s gentle songs and his sister’s poetry. but here, everyone yells and pulls constant pranks and bad is no longer a stranger to turning the corner only to watch someone get punched in the face. the others speak of their god of chaos whispering in their ears; bad has a different god in his ears, but he can feel chaos in the air nonetheless, see him in spectres darting down the halls and the wild look in others’ eyes during bacchanals. 

the only reprieve he gets from the  _ loud _ , somehow, is on days he has to tutor tommy. 

right now, he and the kid are set up in dream’s home library with a few secondhand textbooks and math workbooks. bad is tired and sore, bones aching and fingers still tingling with magic from his training. tommy is stumbling through his homework, and bad waits for him to finish. while he waits he reads through an old journal dream told him to read, one that speaks of old spells and rituals. it’s almost fantastical, but over the last few months bad has lived here he has started to accept the fantastical. 

there’s a lot more to this world than bad had thought, clearly. there is magic - the ancient magic in bad’s blood or the chaos magic dream was gifted or the fire magic sapnap was blessed with or the sleep magic george was cursed with. all sorts, more prevalent than he ever could have imagined. 

and there are others, like bad, who are not quite human. some in different ways than he is: he reads of sirens, of demons, of monsters. he meets some of them. men with horns and tails and sharp looks in their eyes visit dream to  _ talk _ , people whose magic twists their features join their group to worship chaos. they are so extremely common that bad isn’t sure how he  _ didn’t  _ know. (maybe he just hadn’t realized - now that he’s looking he sees the fangs in dream’s mouth and the claws on his fingers, sees how chaos’s magic sunk into his bones and made him just a bit off from being human.)

he wonders which he is more: the half of him that is a human boy from california, or the half of him that is the child of the sorcerer. 

he looks more supernatural than not. he has fangs in his mouth and horns growing in and black scleras and - well. he is not human, not anymore, and even if it were not for all these otherworldly features he would have still ceased to be human the moment his mother and sister died. 

tommy is one of the few blessedly non magical humans around, though. even if the kid is loud and cusses too much for someone his age (or anyone, really), he’s  _ nice,  _ and the only other kid who sticks around here long. frankly, bad took him under his wing immediately. 

“bad?” tommy says, startling bad from his reading. he leans across the table, voice falling to a whisper. “you do  _ magic  _ stuff, right?” 

bad’s eyes flick up from his book. a fond smile curls his lips. “yes?” the truth is that he  _ tries  _ to do magic stuff. he’s not very good at it yet. 

tommy cups a small hand over his mouth. “dream said that one day he’ll let  _ me  _ do magic too.” 

bad stills. there is something twisting his gut but he’s not sure what it is yet. “what do you mean?”

tommy grins, wide and proud. “he said chaos  _ chose me,  _ bad,” he gushes, “he said when i’m older he’ll let me be like him. that i can do magic, and serve chaos, and be the high priest.” 

horror, bad thinks. he thinks it’s horror in his gut.

why did he come here? why did he stay? 

his clawed fingers clutch the book. right. right. he needs to be taught. 

and what has dream done wrong? he has done nothing but his god’s will, bad supposes. he’s not hurt anyone. his rules are strict, but he hasn’t  _ hurt  _ anyone, hasn’t done anything wrong. he’s helping. he’s only helping. it’s not as if bad or tommy had anywhere else to go. 

* * *

bad drags himself to the altar room, blood still under his nose from dream’s fist, hands still freezing cold from practicing his magic. 

dream’s chaos magic is wild and unrestrained and it burns bad when it touches him, but it is anything but uncontrolled. dream can easily send people or situations into panic with just a snap of his fingers, can easily set his hands alight in seconds, can send windows and doors and cupboards flying open in a draftless room or clocks’ hands spinning or chairs dragging themselves across rooms. 

bad’s magic is wild and unrestrained and uncontrollable, and it is killing him from the inside out. 

his parent - the sorcerer - is a demon, he is told. a demon strong enough to be a god but who is truly anything but. the sorcerer was created from the fire of the nether and found power in being the only source of ice and chill, the only reprieve from the fire in the whole realm. the legend goes that the blood god came to the nether and found them, told them how to leave, and so the sorcerer dragged themselves up through the portal. on the other side they met chaos and the creator, in which they found a friend and a teacher. stories speak of the sorcerer whispering new spells into royal wizards’ ears to influence wars and giving young girls magic to defend themselves and crying when their witches were burned. 

and now here is bad. he bows his head to chaos’s altar first; it is large, laden with heavy golden and marble statues and offerings and half melted candles. on its left is chaos’s sibling’s altar, the blood god’s; it’s a bit smaller and so are its statues, but on it sits the head of one of the farm’s goats, and bad gives it a moment of respect, too. then he turns to the sorcerer’s. 

on the sorcerer’s altar sit statues of deities of their domain: hekate and isis and math fab mathonwy and a few others. deities who could have been - probably  _ were  _ \- the sorcerer. there are offerings of crystals and used ritual materials, and spell boxes and jars and scrolls sit there in the casters’ hopes that the sorcerer will bless them. the sorcerer is a bit picky with which spells they choose to bless, though. 

bad bows his head. the voice in his head grows louder. 

_ you are stronger than you were yesterday,  _ they say, like they do each visit.  _ i am proud.  _

bad’s eyes sting as the sorcerer tells him to  _ stay with chaos. he will take good care of you.  _

* * *

bad grows. 

years pass and bad grows and watches tommy shrink, the kid somehow becoming smaller than he was the day they met. tommy retreats into himself and so does bad, in a sense, but in another way bad becomes larger than life. in stuttering steps bad walks down the path towards control over the ancient magic in his blood. it starts with protection spells in his room, small rituals of candles and herbs calling for wealth in their home, and it progresses until two years later bad is sixteen and setting wards around the farm. 

they have been dwindling the last few years, since their last magician left. her magic is still in the ground, and bad calls on it to reinforce his own. 

when he asks what happened to her, dream answers, “she tried to leave.” 

bad understands the implications. 

and then the years carry on. dream has bad wrapped around his finger and bad knows it. he is being manipulated, he knows that, this is not what a home is meant to be, he  _ knows  _ that, and yet. 

and yet, he stands at the front door, a bag slung over his shoulders, and the guilt and fear and voice in his ear convinces him to return to his room and stay one more, two more, three more nights. 

he wants to bring tommy with him, if he leaves. he  _ needs  _ to bring tommy. but tommy follows on dream’s heels like a puppy, eyes big and worshipping and he can’t seem to wait for the day he is bound to chaos, and bad knows it will not be easy. 

bad is a coward. 

* * *

he is twenty when that changes. 

tomorrow is his twenty first birthday. sapnap and george want to have a drink with him later tonight, and bad is  _ scared -  _ scared because he has been watching the distance between them and dream grow, scared because sapnap had been shifting nervously on his feet, scared because he thinks he knows what they will ask of him. 

tomorrow is his twenty first birthday, and bad is hiding in his room. he’s curled up in the space in between his bed and the wall, head between his knees. it is the same room he has slept in since he was fourteen, and he never actually got to go to freshman year, and he never even applied for college - he should be far away from here. he used to want to go to cal arts, but he hasn’t drawn in years, now. 

he can’t stop thinking about the way tommy had screamed just a few hours ago, the way dream had laughed, the way fire had taken over tommy’s body and sunk into his bones as he was bound to chaos. bad gives a small sob into his knees. 

“are you alright?” 

bad startles, scrambling up onto his knees to peer over the bed. there’s a man sitting there, criss cross applesauce, draped in a soft multicolored hoodie. bad takes a minute to recognize the swirling logo on its front- 

“you’re one of clara’s?” he asks instead of answering. he can feel the time magic, now, practically rolling off of him in waves. 

bad’s never actually  _ met  _ anyone associated with clara the astronaut, the goddess of space and time. they’re somewhat rare, and most of them are time travelers, which you can imagine makes them a bit hard to pin down. 

“i am,” he says, “i’m karl.” 

“bad.” 

“i know.”    


  
“are you from the past or the future?” 

karl smiles, soft and a bit sad. bad recognizes the look from his own face. “the future. i’m a friend of sapnap’s, but he doesn’t know me quite yet.” 

bad is just a little startled at that. sapnap, like bad, lives a life of isolation. the only friends they tend to have are the ones who live with them. bad thinks this man might be a good sign for the future. 

he blinks as karl hands something over: a newspaper. 

bad furrows his eyebrows, flipping it over to read the front page - and freezes at the sight of skeppy’s face. 

_ CULT LEADER CHARGED ON THREE HOMICIDE COUNTS,  _ reads the headline. it is dated for several years from now. bad keeps staring, staring,  _ staring _ , at a face he has not seen in seven years. there’s a man and a woman, too, smiling happily outside a small house. the final picture is dream, his mask gone, face scruffy and hair greasy. 

he takes a stuttering breath as his eyes skim down the article.  _ dream wastak was the head of a cult in rural ohio… murdered the close friend of a teenager who later committed arson and killed several people before disappearing…also guilty of the double homicide of the foster parents of a child he himself later adopted…  _

“dream killed skeppy,” bad breathes, and karl nods solemnly. 

“he did.” karl reaches forward, resting his hand on bad’s shoulder. it’s a bit awkward how bad is sitting, but bad doesn’t care, too focused on the white noise in his ears. “bad. you and tommy, you aren’t safe here. sapnap’s going to ask you for your help tonight. you  _ have  _ to help.” 

* * *

in truth, bad does not feel like he is in prison. 

he can’t. not when he spent so long with dream. 

he feels freer than he ever has, even if the knowledge that tommy hates him weighs heavy on his shoulders. he will have to be here for a long while, but at least he is far from dream’s control. 

that is, until the day dream bails him out. 

in the parking lot of the courthouse, bad charges on him, magic on his hands, but he has not been eating well and he is tired and it’s only a few minutes before he is subdued. it does not help that the sorcerer does not want him to win - the sorcerer wants him back  _ home,  _ with chaos, their best friend.

they drive back to the farm in silence. bad does not cry, but his eyes burn. 

“you need me to keep the wards going,” bad says as they pull down the driveway. 

“i want you  _ home, _ ” dream says sharply. “you’re family, bad, you’re like my little brother. and i just-” his grip on the wheel is white-knuckled. “i can’t believe you three would  _ do this.  _ would take my  _ son.  _ i have given you nothing but a good life, bad, how could you do this to us?” 

bad does not answer. even when he knows it is a lie, it still carves its way into his heart. 

tommy is with philza, a name bad has certainly heard before and one he hopes he can trust. tommy is far away from here. tommy is safe, and george and sapnap remain out of dream’s control. the ancient magic he holds is more the sorcerer’s than it is his, and the sorcerer does not want him to win and so he will not even if he tries.

he climbs out of the car and prepares to redo the wards.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- a note: this pulls a lot from real life religions - *especially* paganism, since i myself am a pagan. this isn't meant to demonize or insult any real life religion. in this universe there is one definitively real pantheon, a completely fake religion, and i use what i know of real life religions to help me write it! 
> 
> also yes the chapter count went up. im sorry . i keep having ideas
> 
> anyway!! thank you so much for reading and WOW there's been a lot of support !! i really can't believe how much support this fic has gotten it is absolutely AMAZING. thank you so so so so much 
> 
> please leave a comment if you enjoyed! it really means a lot! also, you can follow me on twitter - @itslumarii
> 
> we will b back to our regularly scheduled sbi next chapter !!

**Author's Note:**

> yeah mmmm that good good dadza shit 
> 
> anyway. please leave a kudos or comment to lmk u enjoyed !! tysm !! second chapter is already finished and should be posted next week :)


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